Dalek Voice Tutorial

video upload by Alex Ball

"How to do the Dalek voice with a ring modulator."

With an ARP 2600 & KORG MS50.

McCartney's Weird Sequence

video upload by Alex Ball

"I thought it would be fun to look at one of my favourite uses of the ARP Sequencer, which is in Paul McCartney's 'Temporary Secretary' released in 1980.

I also thought it would be interesting to see what the song would sound like if everything was done on synths, rather than guitars, bass and drums.

0:00 Temporary Secretary
2:00 Let's do our own version
6:01 The Result"

THE KORG VC-10 VOCODER FROM 1978

video upload by Alex Ball

"A look at the Korg VC-10 from 1978, their first ever vocoder. It was part of the MS range and was used by Buggles, Tomita, Keith Emerson, Apollo 440, Klaus Schulze and many others.

0:00 Intro
1:43 Basic Vocoding
3:51 Shenanigans 1: Vocello
5:07 Shenanigans 2: Drum Chord
6:56 Shenanigans 3: Ext Pitch
8:04 Shenanigans 4: MS-01 Footsie
8:52 Outro

Nerdy details as promised:
The VC-10 is a 20 band vocoder with an onboard microphone (modulator) and internal tone generators (carriers)

Controls:
Pitch wheel, tuning and an octave switch
Keyboard to noise balance
External signal (carrier) in with level
Internal and external Mic level (modulator)
Balance of vocoder signal and audio through
External pitch control of the internal tone generators
An LFO (vibrato) with speed and depth
Accent bend (a kind of envelope mod on attack to emulate the human voice changing pitch)
Ensemble Effect (same as the PS-3100)

I also used the MS-01 foot pedal and MS-02 interface from the same range as well as the Roland System 100m and Boss RPS-10 and CE-300 FX."

ISE-NIN: A Jupiter-8 Replicant

video upload by Alex Ball

"A look at the Black Corporation ISE-NIN which is an 8-voice analogue synthesizer based on the Roland Jupiter-8 from 1981.

https://black-corporation.com/product...

0:00 Intro Jam
1:07 Ise-Nin
1:41 Demo 1: Synth & Drums
2:26 What's Old?
3:44 Demo 2: Whimsy
4:52 What's New? Pt 1
5:42 Demo 3: Touche
6:11 What's New? Pt 2
7:08 Demo 4: Two's Company
8:04 Comparisons with a Jupiter-8
10:12 Comparison to a Super Jupiter
11:10 My Opinions
12:52 Outro Jam"

The History of the miniKORG

video upload by Alex Ball

"A mini documentary telling the story of Korg's first synthesizer.

0:00 Background 2:19 The miniKORG 700
5:25 Impact
6:13 Legacy and the 700FS

All incidental music composed with the miniKORG 700FS."

The Sounds Of HALO: Combat Evolved

video upload by Alex Ball



"A look at some of the equipment used by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori to score Halo: Combat Evolved, released in 2001.

Huge thank you to Neo Te Aika, Frostbyte, Booey, Noelle, Yewlyn, Python Blue, Jafet Meza, RenSFX, meowsandstuff, Fleetwire, AtlyxMusic, PunkGalFuryn and anyone else at Project Odyssey for their incredible work identifying many of the sounds that I showed in this video.

Check out Project Odyssey:
https://odysseyaudio.org/odyssey.html

Thank you also to my Patrons on Patreon.

0:00 Intro
0:50 Halo
3:21 Terminate
5:27 India Garden
7:12 TarzansDance
8:41 St. Choir
9:14 Beauty Vox
10:12 Kit 424
11:06 Symphonique
12:25 Biosphere
12:53 Cascade
14:09 Albion
15:01 Oasis
15:51 SoundtrkDANC
16:38 Summary"

Daft Punk Synth Tutorial

Published on Dec 30, 2018 Alex Ball

"This week I thought I'd demo three Daft Punk synth sounds / samples on original hardware.

As these are all VCO-based analogue synths that are the best part of 40 years old, you'll probably find that settings vary slightly from one unit to the next. In fact, the settings vary on a daily basis on my own synths, depending upon temperature or how long they've been switched on etc.

CLICK FOR MORE »

Roland System 500 versus vintage System 100m and SH-5 Synthesizers

Published on Jun 7, 2019 Alex Ball

"I’ve been leant a Roland System 500 for a video and so the first thing I wanted to try with it was a side-by-side with the System 100m (1978) and SH-5 (1976) as these are two of the heritage synths that inspired it.

The third synth it’s based on is the System 700, but I’m sure you can forgive me for not getting that one in there too!

All-in-all I think the System 500 is excellent, has the Roland family sound and stands up well against the classics that inspired it. Trying to be as impartial as possible, there are a couple of comments I had about it that could be improved which I also mention, but I genuinely think it’s a great sounding and accessible modular synth.

Let me know what you think about it."

The AIR Vocoder

video upload by Alex Ball

"A quick look at the Korg Digital Voice Processor (DVP-1) from 1986, which was used by Air on numerous productions, including "Kelly Watch the Stars" from Moon Safari.

The DVP was originally designed to give programmable voice effects at an affordable price, but you can run any audio signal you like through it. There's four main engines or 'modes':

Vocoder (as the name suggests, a digital vocoder)
Harmonize (add five intervals to an audio signal, also has chord memory)
Int Wave (internal digital waves that can be played via midi)
Pitch Shift (digital pitch shifting)

There's a built-in chorus effect, unison and poly modes and patch memory.

Editing is tedious, but easy; select the parameter button and use the legend on the top of the unit to find the number of the required parameter, then use the value editor to change it. There's various settings for the different modes including formant shift, waveforms, pitch envelope, modulation generator (LFO), harmonizer intervals, chorus speed, intensity, type, MIDI etc etc

0:00 Intro
0:59 The Modes
2:53 Summary & Sexy Boy"

Akai VX600 Synthesizer | Well, you found me

Published on Mar 21, 2019 Alex Ball

"This was an interesting one. I’d never heard of the Akai VX600 until a couple of weeks ago, so I came into it with absolutely no preconceptions.

When I saw it, I assumed it was a sampler. It’s actually a synth and surprisingly, given it only has 37-keys, it’s a six-voice poly synth. Perhaps most unexpected is the fact that it’s analogue.

So with the surprises out of the way, I fired it up and discovered you have to run a computer controlled calibration and let it warm up. It’s actually quite reminiscent of the Oberheim Xpander in terms of workflow and quirks.

You have two oscillators per voice with various combinable waveshapes, three envelopes, two filters, two LFOs per voice. It’s velocity sensitive and has aftertouch and midi. It’s also multitimbral and you can load different sounds for each voice (as you can on the Xpander).

There’s even a multi-pin connection to get all the voices separately and a whole setup dedicated for use with a wind controller. It’s quite an oddball!

I actually wrote three pieces of music on it before I found a direction that had some cohesion. I started with a warped magical thing, then did something dystopian and finally landed with the track heard in the video. I hope you like it and that it gives off the character of the synth.

Instruments:
Akai VX600 (1988)
Roland JX-3P + PG200 (1983)
Boss CE-2 and DM-2 pedals
Roland TR-77 (1972)
I sampled and made custom rhythms as it’s a preset machine
Fairlight CMI II drum samples
Abbey Road 80s Drummer
Fairlight Vocal Samples layered with my voice through a Voice Spectra Vocoder
String section – Spitfire Audio and LA Scoring Strings
End vocals recorded with an AKG C414s"

Heavy Metal On Synthesizers

Published on Mar 18, 2020 Alex Ball

"Ken Danger (332 The Rhumba of the Beast) takes up the challenge of making heavy metal with synthesizers and a drum machine. 🤘"

Nice poster of Dave Smith on the wall. :)

Prophet VS | There Will Be Modulation

Published on Jan 16, 2019 Alex Ball

"The Prophet VS from 1986 is one of the most sought after of the original Sequential instruments. They only made 1,500 of the keyboard versions and around 500 of the rack mounts. I was very fortunate to be able to borrow one.

I talked about this synth in my documentary "The History of the Prophet Synthesizer", but the (great) demo was done by Marko at Retro Sound and I'd never actually seen one in the flesh myself.

If you don't know, designed by Chris Meyer, Josh Jeffe and Tony Dean; the VS is basically a digital synthesizer with an analogue filter and VCA. The sound generation is through a wavetable style approach with 127 different waveforms being available on each of the 4 oscillators. As this 80s tech, the single waves had to spread spread across the keyboard which results in some cool aliasing.

Once you've setup up your combination, you can ride between them in real time with the joystick on the top left of the instrument.

It also has a 7 source / 7 destination mod matrix, two LFOs, stereo chorus with independent switching, split, link and double keyboard modes, an arpeggiator, 99 memory slots, midi and aftertouch. The latter is infamous for going wrong due to two different design flaws with the voltage level and the instrument bending.

Interestingly, the envelopes are setup with stages 0-4 and can loop between stages 1-3 if you wish them to.

Chris Meyer has documented the whole story of the instrument here: https://learningmodular.com/the-story...

Whilst I dove in and started finding textural soundscapes, bell tones and peculiar atmospheres, I was most taken back by the very analogue-style sounds it could create. But, with the stereo movement you get from the instrument, the sounds still have something very "VS" about them. I dubbed it a "straddler" in my mind; a synth that has its feet in quite different camps.

I followed my nose, which seems the way to approach the VS and this is the result. I hope you enjoy it."

Looks Like a Toy - Sounds Awesome!

video upload by Alex Ball

"A look at the Yamaha CS01 Micro-Monophonic Synthesizer from 1982. This was one of Yamaha's last analogue synthesizers and was part of an affordable range called the 'Producer Series'.

It looks and feels like a toy, but looks can be deceiving..."

Asking the difficult question at Synthfest.

video upload by mylarmelodies

"Being a meandering selection of moments and chats from Synthfest in 2022, in which we explore the question(s) on everyone's lips. Featuring conversations with Nick Batt, Scanner, Gaz Williams, Alex Ball, Tom Carpenter, 'M185'-inventing RYK himself, Nina Richards, and many more. http://www.patreon.com/mylarmelodies"

P.S. Smart MIDI Patchbay, & Ivo Beatrix Lorelei Persephone added to the sonicstate playlist posted here. See the SynthFest UK label for all posts on the event.

Roland SH-2 | Black Box Skank

Published on May 23, 2019 Alex Ball

"The Roland SH-2 from 1979 is one vintage piece I’d never seen in the flesh and one that wasn’t physically in my 'Land of the Rising Sound' documentary, so it’s great to be able to cover it on the channel.

Huge thanks to Ian Livingstone for the loan.

It reminds me of the SH-7 and SH-1 in terms of sound and the “auto bend” is very much in keeping with the early SH models, but then it’s also quite clearly a step towards the later SH-101 in terms of its layout. Quite an interesting one!

The SH-2 has Sine, Sawtooth, Square and PWM available on oscillator 1 and Noise, Sawtooth, Square and PWM on oscillator 2. There’s also a sub-oscillator, which really beefs things up.

It has one LFO (Sine, Square and S&H) with delay that can modulate pulse width, oscillator-frequency, filter cut-off and also trigger the one envelope. The filter is low-pass and can self-oscillate. There’s also portamento and adjustable auto-bend as mentioned earlier.

The SH-2 had a little brother with a single oscillator, the SH-9 (which I’ve never played). I’m guessing it’s very similar in a kind of Korg MS-20 / MS-10 sibling way. If you’ve played both, let me know!

There’s a few specific things I did such as taking the CV/Gate out and hooking up the SH-101 that ran back through the “Ext Audio In” of the SH-2. That gave me 3 oscillators and 2 sub oscillators so that I could mix and detune footings and waveshapes.

I also ran midi to my TB-303 and fired on CV/Gate from that to the SH-2. The 303 also ran through the Ext Audio In so that the whole effect came through the same filter / envelope / VCA.

Instruments Used:
Roland SH-2 (1979)
Roland SH-101 (1982)
Roland TB-303 (1981)
Roland TR-606 (1981)
Sequential Drumtraks (1984)
DSi Prophet REV2 (2017)
Yamaha U3 Piano (stereo mic’d)
Ibanez JEM 7DBK / Fender Blues Junior II / Mic’d with an SM57
Some EMU Emulator and Fairlight stabs
Couple of Project Alpha Sounds
There’s also a Pro~One and Korg MS-20 doing some cameo FX that I added after and didn’t film."

50-year-old Rhythm Machine with Midi! & Joe Jackson's - Steppin' Out

Published on Dec 20, 2019

"My Roland TR-77 / Rhythm -77 is just back from surgery after it had a Unipulse midi kit installed.

Here's Tubbutec's page on it: https://tubbutec.de/unipulse/

Here's the other videos I mentioned:

Sampling the TR-77: [below]

Processing with the Maxon RM-60: [posted here]

Thanks for watching!"

Sampling Vintage Rhythm Machines [INCLUDES FREE SAMPLES]

Published on Sep 12, 2019 Alex Ball

"I love the sound of old analogue rhythm machines, but I always wanted to be able to program them like my drum machines. Without the knowledge or skill to modify them, I thought that maybe multi-sampling them would give me what I was after.

I’m over the moon with the results and I think that the Kontakt multi versions sound awesome. Hopefully you’ll have fun with them too!

Download: http://bit.ly/RhythmMachines

Bit of background: Although the earlier rhythm machines were intended to accompany lone musicians (mainly organists) and were controlled with start/stop footswitches, they do crop up in a few records.

The “Cha-Cha” preset from the TR-77 appears in Ultravox’s “Hiroshima Mon Amour” and it’s apparently the (rather processed) rhythm machine heard at the start of Squeeze’s “Take me I’m yours”. The seemingly popular “Cha-Cha” also appears at the start of Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” albeit at a different pitch (perhaps done with tape speed).

The earlier version of the Rhythm 55B (the Rhythm 55) was also the very unit used by Joe Jackson on “Steppin’ Out”. In fact, he’s recently been bringing it out on tour with him: [below]

The Korg is a bit of a hanger on being released in 1982 given that 808s, LinnDrums and DMXs were out by then. The Roland CR-5000 and CR-8000 also snuck into the 80s, but they were really at the end of this kind of instrument that had its heyday in the late 60s and 70s.

Instruments used in this video:
Roland Rhythm 77 / TR-77 (1972)
Korg Rhythm 55B / KR-55B (1982)
Roland SH-1000 (1973)
Korg MS-20 (1978)
ARP Odyssey model 2813 (1975)
Roland Juno-6 (1982)"

Joe Jackson - Steppin' Out (Studio version, Joe explains the song) - Live in Italy 2019

Published on Mar 20, 2019

Studio version, with the original drum machine!
Four Decade Tour
Rome, 19 March 2019
Auditorium Conciliazione

A Closer Look at the Roland System 700 from 1976!

Published on Jan 30, 2020 Alex Ball

"The Roland System 700 was a cutting edge and overly engineered masterpiece from 1976 that is both rare and curious.

As so few of these Systems were made, there's only a couple of dozen videos on YouTube showing them and several of those are just quick phone recordings.

So for posterity, I've made two videos featuring a System that I borrowed for a month in early 2020.

Here's the previous performance video [Roland System 700 | Axiom]

Here's the breakdown of this "Closer Look" video:

0:00 - Intro
0:51 - Sound 1 "Mud Flap Bass" Demonstration
1:36 - Sound 1 Explanation
3:04 - Sound 2 "Halley's Drumet" Demonstration
3:53 - Sound 2 Explanation
5:22 - Sound 3 "Rubbery Sequence" Demonstration
6:21 - Sound 3 Explanation
7:09 - Sound 4 "Threedemed" Demonstration
8:07 - Sound 4 Explanation
9:17 - Sound 5 "Womp-Womp" Demonstration
9:43 - Sound 5 Explanation
10:10 - Sound 6 "Follow My Lead" Demonstration
10:47 - Sound 6 Explanation
11:20 - Outro

All recordings are of the System 700 only and there are no external FX or tricks used at all. There's a bit of compression on the output of my DAW to level the audio for this video but it's otherwise the totally pure sound of the 700.

Huge thanks to the owner of this System and thank you for watching!"

Prophet~5 Tutorial: Radiohead, Aphex Twin, Japan

video upload by Alex Ball

"I had an opportunity to borrow a vintage Prophet~5 rev3.2 for a short while and, as I've done lots of videos on the Prophet, I thought I'd take the opportunity to create a tutorial showing three of my favourite uses of this classic synth.

0:00 Intro
0:53 Everything In Its Right Place Demo
1:21 Everything In Its Right Place Breakdown
3:21 Rhubarb Demo
3:53 Rhubarb Breakdown
6:39 Ghosts Demo
7:13 Ghosts Breakdown
9:15 Summary
10:05 Outro Jam

Note: Admittedly I'm busking the parts a bit as the video was more about the sounds, so excuse any not-quite-right chords etc.

The principals showns in the video will all work with a Prophet~5/10 rev4 reissue or a plug-in such as Repro-5 or the Arturia Prophet~V. They are also applicable to other synths that can replicate the architecture of a Prophet~5 (many synths can)."

Roland Fantom, ARP Odyssey, and UDO Super-6 make an appearance as well.

Blade Runner Style

Published on Jul 19, 2018 Alex Ball

"Past to Future samples are one of my favourite developers. They recently put out a Kontakt library made with the holy grail that is the Yamaha CS-80 (1976).

It was recorded with a Lexicon 224 and baked onto a Studer A80 tape machine. It's about as authentic as you'll find. There's 12 patches all designed to capture the vibe of Vangelis and Blade Runner. They're seriously dreamy and huge, straight out of the box. And it costs just $15 to purchase!

Link here: https://gumroad.com/pasttofuturereverbs

I put some patches to use in an original composition that's a humble homage to the great composer. I experimented with his meandering and modulating style and if you're interested, the main chord pattern is: Cm, B2add#4, A2add#4, Abadd2, Gb6/9, Fm7 and then back around. The 12 bar phrase is open ended and so it's less obvious where it starts and ends, quite a useful technique. The JX-3P also has its second oscillators tuned a perfect 5th up, which creates some interesting bitonal harmony in some places and adds upper extensions in others.

Sounds used:
Yamaha CS-80 Blade Runner Synth for Kontakt - four patches
Roland JX-3P
Korg MS-20
Sequential Circuits Pro-One
Oberheim DX
Roland TR-606
Rhodes Mark I Seventy Three
Rhythmic Robot EMU Emulator II
Spitfire Joby Burgess Percussion
Orchestral Tools Metropolis Ark 3 timpani

Sequencer: Cubase 9 / Arturia Beatstep Pro
Plugins: Goodhertz Vulf-Compressor, T-racks, Waves, Past to future reverbs, U-he Satin

CS-80 images from this awesome archive: http://retrosynthads.blogspot.com/"

URSA MAJOR VINTAGE FX

video upload by Alex Ball

"A look at the Space Station SST-282 and Stargate 323 units designed by Ursa Major, a company founded by Christopher Moore that operated from 1977 until 1985.

0:00 Intro
0:23 Demo 1: Space Repeats
1:16 Talk 1: Who were Ursa Major?
1:54 Demo 2: Delay Clusters
2:34 Talk 2: What is the Space Station?
3:29 Demo 3: Combs
4:24: Talk 3: The Trick
5:02 Demo 4: Reverb
6:01 Talk 4: Stargate 323/626
6:59 Demo 5: 323
7:35 Demo 6: Stargate
8:07 Demo 7: Spaces
9:11 Talk 5: Summary
9:53 Talk 6: What became of Ursa Major?
11:30 Contextual Demo: Found in the Sound

The Space Station and Stargate were used on almost every part on the final song, hopefully demonstrating how they work in a fuller musical context.

Thank you to the owners of these two wonderful units, you know who you are!"